


Paper Valentines

by luninosity



Series: ...and this compromise [7]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BDSM, Belts, Breathplay, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluffy Porn, Improvised Sex Toys, Kink Exploration, M/M, Porn With Plot, Relationship Negotiation, Trust, Use Of Powers In Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 17:38:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1235239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Russia, after the encounter with Emma Frost, Charles has a request, Erik learns to listen, and sex and compromises occur. </p><p>Series being written for utterlysorbine’s prompt of <i>Erik and Charles are starting to negotiate a budding relationship - as dominant (Erik) and submissive (Charles). Whilst Charles is all for this, as someone who's been bred and raised to be in charge of any given situation, he can't help find the whole thing very awkward. Erik's happy to be patient with him - he just loves him and wants to look after him, even if Charles still isn't comfortable with being looked after.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Valentines

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the delay! I realized there had to be one more story before the one I already had started, so then I had to write it... I think three or four to go?
> 
> Title and opening lines courtesy of Green Day’s “Cigarettes and Valentines” this time.

_red alert is the color_

_of your paper valentines_

_intertwined on this moment passing by_

_oh, come away with me tonight_

_with cigarettes and valentines_

_cigarettes and valentines..._

 

Russia. The air’s sharp-toothed and brittle. Charles stands at the window, but watches Erik, not the icy world. That tension’s sharp-toothed, too.  
  
The CIA plane will be back for them the next morning, waiting at the scheduled pick-up site; they’re out of contact until then. The plane’ll collect them, and the agents, and Emma Frost, who’s currently being held in another room of the dingy gun-metal grey hotel. The building’s old and Soviet-strict and owned, beneath layers of multiple aliases, by the Agency; it’s the best they’ve got for the night. No phone calls in or out, of course. No way to check in with Raven or Hank McCoy back at Langley. No way to accomplish a great many things.  
  
Charles bites his lip, and doesn’t lift a hand to rub his temple, though his head’s throbbing. He might’ve be able to reach his sister, but Raven’s always been good at walls, ever since he taught her around the time puberty descended, and he’s tried very hard to respect her privacy: he won’t go crashing his way into her mind like a wrecking ball, and in his present state and over this distance he’s not certain he’s capable of any more finesse.  
  
Erik’s pocket paper-clips whirl and buzz in the icy air, furious metallic bees spinning and colliding. Erik’s not pacing like a deadly panther across the patched carpet, because Erik doesn’t waste energy. Erik’s being very motionless, sitting still on the single twin bed, right now.  
  
“We’ll find him,” Charles says, because he never has known how to not speak when there are words to be said. “I may not know precisely where Shaw is, but Emma Frost knew his plans. We’ll find him.”  
  
“ _You_ can’t find him.” Very flat. Emotionlessness hiding rage. The voice fugitive Nazis must’ve heard, the last sound before they became unable to hear anything ever again. “He can block you. You’ve said so. Tell me how you can assist in finding him.”  
  
“Yes,” Charles agrees, keeping his voice even with an effort. That hurts in a way he’d not expected: not just the deliberate venting of Erik’s sizzling frustration, but also on a shocked private darker level, someplace private and tiny and wounded in his chest. He’s Erik’s, he’s Erik’s submissive, he’s promised to belong to Erik, and if Erik thinks him useless…  
  
But that thought makes him angry, too. He’s _not_ useless. He never will be. And so: sod off, he says mentally, to both the little unhappy voice and Erik’s half-intended cruelty. “I can’t read his mind. But I can feel the…blank space of it. The shape cut out of the world. I can’t touch him, but if he’s in range I can track him.”  
  
He doesn’t say the rest of it. Doesn’t bother to explain. What would he say? I’m already exhausted from blinding the guards on the truck and from scouring Emma Frost’s brain and from the way you ran into battle without waiting for me to fight at your side? How can I tell you that Shaw feels _cold_ , a hole inside my head, the place where there ought to be a man and instead there’s a black hole like a corpse, something dead and unreal, and when I reach for him I feel like I’ve stepped onto a staircase expecting solid ground and instead fallen off a cliff, and it never gets better, no, every time it feels so _wrong_ …  
  
Erik’s gaze narrows, focused in on him, precise as a knife-throw. “Can you find him now?”  
  
“N—I could try.”  
  
“Were you about to say no?”  
  
“No. Never mind. I’ll try if you ask.” It won’t work, and he might not be able to hold back the scream, but he will.  
  
“Charles—” Erik stops. The paper-clips quiver, restless. “What is it?”  
  
“Nothing.” He crosses over to the bed, the chill from the window lingering at his back. Sits down, not where Erik’s poised at the foot, but on the side near the single flat and melancholy pillow. After a second he puts his hand on it, fiddling aimlessly with a loose thread at the corner. “Do you want me to try now?”  
  
Erik looks at him, for perhaps the first time since they’ve gotten back to the hotel. And then Erik’s eyes change, reading some combination of body language and tone and whatever expression Charles’s face is making. “Charles, are you all right? Did she—Frost—if she hurt you—if anyone hurt you—”  
  
And Erik’s thoughts are so loud, then: shouting and anxious, frightened and not wanting to be, but full of _Charles, Charles, what if he’s hurt, what if he was hit by one of the guards, no no no I would know I’d’ve felt it, I’d see, what if he isn’t letting me see, what if he doesn’t trust me, Charles no I love you and I will keep you safe I swear except I didn’t, did I, not today, oh G-d…_  
  
“No. Nothing like that. I’m not hurt.” He shrugs. Looks at Erik; looks at the pillowcase. “It’s my own fault. Only tired.”  
  
“You’re not in my head,” Erik says. “I mean. You are, you always are, but—you’re talking. Out loud.”  
  
“Overexertion,” Charles says. _I’m all right_. Even that comes with a twinge, not pain yet but a warning.  
  
“You…” Erik shifts body weight to face him. “You did more than I knew, out there. You kept the men from seeing us, in the truck. And then you put those guards to sleep when you came after me. And Emma Frost…”  
  
“Nothing I can’t handle.” He tries for a smile. It doesn’t come out well. “I didn’t have time—or the inclination—to be gentle with her. And it felt…like having several years’ worth of very meticulous megalomaniacal plotting injected straight into my head. Which is not a sensation one can easily explain. But I’m all right.”  
  
“May I touch you?” Erik holds out a hand. The remorse is winning out gradually amid the maelstrom of thoughts. The paper-clips drift to the single bedside table and settle into a coil.  
  
“Yes,” Charles says. _Yes, sir_.  
  
“Oh—” Erik’s startled by that, and then annoyed at himself for being startled. Charles does have to smile, then. _Charles, are you—you want—_  
  
 _I don’t know_ . He waits while Erik comes over and sits beside him. Admits, because Erik has come to sit beside him, “It’s like wet paper. Little bits getting left behind, dispersed…little bits of other pages getting stuck to my pages…that’s a terrible metaphor, isn’t it? I don’t know how to say it any better. I wish I did.”  
  
“Anchors,” Erik says after a moment. “That’s it, isn’t it? You told me, once.” _You said you needed to feel it. To feel me. And I haven’t done that for you, have I?_  
  
He answers with the memory, not words: Erik running into a knot of guards and guns, Erik never looking back, Erik thinking nothing at all about Charles or whether Charles would follow or whether Charles would mourn if he died there on icy Russian grass…  
  
“Oh,” Erik says, low and inadvertent, as if the impact’s physically hurt. “Charles, I—”  
  
 _I love you. I would follow you anywhere—I DID—and I can help, you know I can help, and you didn’t—_ He has to stop. The next words will be _you didn’t care, you don’t care_ , and he can’t give them the weight of reality.  
  
There’s a pause, cracking like ice. The room, the night, the pillowcase, are all very silent.  
  
Slowly, cautiously, as if one or both of them might skitter away, Erik’s fingers reach out and find his. They’re long and warm and strong.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Erik says, collecting words like flowers rescued from a minefield, sparse and rare and lovely. _I am sorry, Charles. I only—I was so close, we were so close, and—but that’s not an excuse. It’s what happened. Will you…_ Another pause, trembling. The petals threaten to scatter. _Can you try to believe me if I tell you that I love you?_  
  
And Charles whispers back _I can try_ , and feels more than sees Erik nod.  
  
“I promised you I’d make you something. To wear. I haven’t had time to—here.” The liquid metal that’d once been Charles’s watch flows up out of Erik’s bag. Hovers tentatively in front of Charles’s left wrist. A question.  
  
“Maybe,” Charles answers. _You can try, as well. I don’t know_ — He stops. And then he says, _More, please, I need more, convince me, make me believe it—_ and before he can catch it back the image of Emma Frost flashes between them, Erik’s metal coiled darkly around her throat, squeezing, tightening, cracking…  
  
The narrow twin bed, in the room they’re in, has iron bars at its head.  
  
Erik drops the shimmering once-watch. Catches it a split second before it would’ve hit the floor. _Charles, you—no—you’re asking me to—_  
  
“That,” Charles whispers. _That—make me feel it, make me know it, how close it could be, so bright and dark and thrilling and—I’m yours if you want me and I want to give you that, my life in your hands, because I know you could take it and instead you’ll keep it safe—_  
  
The shiver runs along his spine, hot and cold and shameful and exquisite. To be that close, to walk that line, to dance along the edge of the abyss while all the sensations explode into infinite ecstasy, multiplied a thousandfold…  
  
“You’ve done this before,” Erik breathes, horrified, shocked, and, yes, also aroused, Charles can feel it, the simmering desire to say yes, to take Charles, to wrap a hand or a sleek line of iron around that fragile throat and hold, ever so gently, knowing that Charles has given him that much, trusted him that far, surrendered that much power. Erik’s imagining the way Charles would look, struggling for air in his grip, eyes wide and lips parted and panting, cock hard with it, cock dripping for it, because Charles _wants_ this from him…  
  
There’s jealousy there too, though less about the physical—Erik knows by now that sometimes Charles simply _needs,_ and there’ve been all those years before this one at last—and more about the whipcrack anger and fear: how could Charles trust someone else this much, someone who’s not Erik, who might _not_ stop in time?  
  
“I’d’ve stopped it,” Charles says softly. “I never—only twice, before. And the second time I did stop him. I could hear what he was thinking, and—I stopped it all.” Erik needs to know that. It’s important. _I’m asking now. Please._  
  
The _please_ derails some of the anger, but not all. “Charles—” An impatient gesture, slicing the air in half; the bolts in the bedframe shudder. _You’re telling me that you could have died._  
  
 _I’m telling you that I wouldn’t let that happen!_  
  
 _Yes, because you can do anything—you can stop me if you have to, and you can make me do this to you if you want it so badly—_ The image there is also of Emma Frost. Of Emma Frost, and the smile on her face, while on a bed a general in uniform writhes and moans and thrusts against nothing at all. _How do I know you’ve not made me want—_  
  
 _You do want to, then—_  
  
 _HAVE you made me want this?_  
  
 _No!_ He yanks his hand away from Erik’s. Pushes himself to his feet. “No, because I wouldn’t, and I’m sorry, Erik, you’ll have to trust me on that one—I can’t prove the negative to you—I wouldn’t even if I didn’t feel as if I might pass out on my feet, because I _wouldn’t_. And if I trust you enough to ask for this, and you can’t bring yourself to trust that I’m telling you the truth, then maybe I should find another room and—”  
  
Erik’s on his feet, swift and sudden. Erik’s hand snaps out. Finds Charles’s throat. Metal ribbons up and bites down around bare wrists, abrupt and painful, jerking both Charles’s hands together behind his back. Erik’s body’s warm and large and furious and aroused, pressed against him.  
  
“Is this what you want? Your life, in my hands?” That hand tightens. Erik’s fingers are long enough to wrap more than halfway around his neck. And the next breath is uncomfortable.  
  
The desire’s instant, a bolt of lightning along his spine and through his cock and balls and every atom of skin beneath the hand. It’s tangible, crackling through the connection between them. Erik freezes in place. Charles shuts his eyes. Nobody moves.  
  
“Tell me one more time,” Erik whispers. _Tell me you want this. Tell me it’s not—not about me hurting you, Charles, it isn’t, I can’t—_  
  
 _No. I mean it isn’t. I mean it’s about us. Knowing I’m yours._  
  
“Open your eyes,” Erik says. _And_ _say yes or say no. Now_.  
  
“Yes,” Charles says, and opens his eyes, finding that winter-river gaze so close to his own. _Yes, sir_.  
  
A bit of the ice thaws and dissolves, water freed from its fortress. “So, yes…” _I do trust you. I believe you. I just—_  
  
 _It’s difficult. I know._ Despite the situation, or maybe exactly because of it, Charles feels his mouth tugging itself into a smile. “I am the one of us asking to be held down and made to come with your hands on my throat, you understand. Not the sort of request one idly tosses out over a chess match.”  
  
“No,” Erik murmurs, and tugs lazily at the cuffs, gaze warming even more. Charles gasps, involuntarily. “No. And…thank you. For asking. Because you did ask…” _I told you once to tell me when you needed this. And you did. That—thank you, Charles, that was—good. You’ve been very good._  
  
Charles hears his own inhale, feels his eyes widen, at the praise. It’s so far from what he’d been expecting—so far from the isolated lonely pain of earlier—that it hits even harder, impact like molten all-encompassing gold, and his knees actually wobble.  
  
“Oh, really…” Erik sounds amused, but his thoughts say more: _beautiful, so beautiful, how can one word from me mean so much, how can he give everything to me so easily, how did I end up here with those eyes and that smile and I will love him so fiercely always forever…_  
  
“It’s not just one word,” Charles says. “Sir.” _You love me. I love you._  
  
“Yes,” Erik says, and their thoughts ring with it, affirmed and shared and triumphant: _yes!_ “I think…it is cold, tonight…we’ll leave your sweater on, Charles. But not the rest.” His belt whips itself open. The zip of his slacks slides down. He’s hard underneath, has been already, and he trembles as Erik leaves him naked from the waist down. It’s somehow more obscene like this, half-dressed and tidy on top, his hands bound by metal, the rest of him bare and on display.  
  
“Lovely,” Erik purrs, and walks him to the bed, pushes him face-down. Rests a hand over the curve of his backside, kneading proprietarily, squeezing, softening muscles. Charles feels the sweetness setting in, the welcome lassitude, the electric floating rush that simultaneously shuts out the demands of the world and allows him to focus on only the demands Erik makes of his body.  
  
“You said you need to feel it…” Considering, contemplating. Fingers dig into tender flesh, hard. “Perhaps I should use your belt on you. Would you like that? You’d get on the plane tomorrow feeling it with every step, every squirm in your seat…knowing I’ve done that to you, and I've done it with your own belt, the one you’ll be wearing…”  
  
Charles moans, openmouthed, into the scratchy military-issue blanket. Yes. Yes, all of that, while he’s spread open over the bed, cock stiff and leaking, body aching to be claimed. Yes.  
  
“Not yet,” Erik muses, and there’s a moment of rattling, busy clatter and jangle, a thump. Erik’s hand strokes over his hip, reassuring. “So much metal, in this room…bolts in this wardrobe, for example…the bed, of course…but this I’m making for you. Don’t worry; I can ensure it’s clean and smooth enough to be inside you. Heat, I think, to help with that.”  
  
Charles quivers. His cock, caught between himself and the mattress, jerks and spills a pulse of fluid over the blanket.  
  
Erik lets the heated metal drop, the tip of the plug—he’s fairly sure, judging from the hazy impressions he’s been picking up, that that’s what it is—resting lightly over his exposed hole. The thought then, sudden and brightly self-irritated, is: _tell me we’ve got something to use, not going to hurt him, not like this…_  
  
Charles, who decidedly does not want Erik to stop and is vowing to them both that from now on he’s permanently carrying lube in at least one pocket, reaches out a little panickedly and finds the aging shower down the hall because there’s an agent humming off-key in it, and says, _liquid soap, sir, metal dispenser_ ; and Erik grins and tugs.  
  
It’s not the ideal, and it’s scented like precisely what it is, which is brisk and efficient and yes, soapy; but it’s also liquid and slick and cool over his hole, as Erik strokes him with a finger, two fingers, opening him wide. Charles sighs at the first press in, at the feeling of being so full; sighs again when the fingers slip out and the swollen metal glides in.  
  
It’s thick and solid and—oh, Erik’s still _heating_ it, the bastard; one glance back confirms the toothy grin. Charles moans, only slightly exaggerated for effect. Erik’s grin gets larger. And the plug swells further, expanding and contracting rhythmically, pulsating warmth just over that spot.  
  
When Charles moans the second time, it’s not at all exaggerated. He can’t help it.  
  
“Good,” Erik says. “I do like you this way, Charles. So eager, so opened up for me, loving everything I do to you. Shall we see if you can take more?”  
  
“Please,” Charles whispers. And Erik leaves the plug inside him, humming away, and picks up the belt.  
  
Erik’s fully dressed. Charles, bent over the bed with his trousers around his ankles and his hands bound and his sweater rapidly being ruined by sweat and smeared pre-come as his cock twitches, feels utterly wanton, deprived, and greedy for more.  
  
The first crack of the belt stings. He doesn’t scream, but he feels it from head to toe, impact centered across his arse but radiating outward everywhere.  
  
Again, harder this time, and he makes a sound, can’t not, but it’s good even as it hurts, exquisite raw pain and pleasure, all those nerve endings glowing and alive with the intensity. Erik doesn’t ask him to count, and at four or five he loses track, quivering, unable to think.  
  
Erik says, “Beautiful, Charles, so good, you’re doing so well, you should see yourself, the way you look, all red and pink and begging for more,” and he is, his body clenches around the plug every time, incandescent waves of bliss inside and out.  
  
The leather cracks down again unexpectedly soon and he does scream, a long liquid wail. It’s the sound and the release and the way his body rocks into the mattress after that does it, or maybe the way Erik’s hand rests lightly over his backside, stroking all the burning welts; either way, he feels himself shiver all over and go languid, the world all at once very distant and very huge, immanent and divine. The bite of fingers when Erik squeezes elicits a moan, but he’s not choosing to make the sound, simply letting it happen.  
  
He closes his eyes, drifting, being drawn off by the rolling billows of rapture.  
  
“Charles,” Erik’s saying. _Charles? Look at me, be with me, I know you feel good, I can feel—you’re sharing—but please I need to know you’re here, just for a moment—_  
  
The cuffs separate, pulling his hands apart; Erik lifts him and turns him and settles him on the bed, and Charles sobs uncomprehendingly as sore places rubs across the roughness of the blanket.  
  
 _Shh_ , Erik murmurs, and runs a hand over his hip, soothing, pressing him down. It still scratches and hurts, but somehow that turns into euphoria too at the touch: transmuted, lead into shining gold. His wrists are being tugged together, deliberately, above his head. The metal fuses itself to the center bar. _Charles. Look at me._  
  
That is an order. Erik doesn’t quite ask whether they’re at red or yellow or whatever bizarre tropical fruit Charles has decided means green, but the question’s hovering at the forefront of busy thoughts.  
  
He opens his eyes—they’re wet, and so is his mouth, from crying. But Erik needs the comfort. _I’m here. Pineapple, sir. Green. I love you._  
  
 _I love you. Always_. “You said you were tired…we’ll make it quick. I want you like this, just like this, your sweater on and your legs spread for me to fuck you while I…” Erik can’t quite say it, but the image is there, vivid and scorching: one of those iron bars from the headboard looped around vulnerable flesh, bearing down, cutting off breath and circulation as Charles moves, hips lifting, fucking himself on Erik’s cock…  
  
Charles whimpers. No words. Only the shimmering sweet tranquility, shot through with flares of agony and ecstasy like shooting stars.  
  
Erik bends down and kisses him, kindly and firmly. Erik tastes like love and determination and a bit of apprehension and chilly night air and desire. Charles kisses back, clumsily, uncoordinated and wanting.  
  
“Good,” Erik breathes over his lips, so good, for me; and then strips off his own clothing in a flurry of fabric and wraps a tendril of power around the plug and pulls, and Charles’s body is terribly dreadfully empty but then Erik’s there, large and hot and sliding inexorably into him, one long invading thrust.  
  
He can hear himself making little panting noises, broken and needy; Erik pulls back and lifts Charles’s limp legs to his own shoulders, and then slams in again. Charles tries to scream as lean hips collide with searing belt-marks, so good it hurts, so painful it’s splendid; and Erik does it again, and again, until the whole world’s flowing and melting and dissolving around his body and the sensations, Erik’s metal around his wrists and Erik’s cock in his hole hammering over that taut bundle of nerves and the ache of wounded skin.  
  
“Stay with me,” Erik whispers, “you asked me for this, for one last thing,” and Erik’s also thinking very loudly at himself _you are NOT going to come yet, you have self-control, you can do this for him—so good, so GOOD, oh G-d, Charles, you are doing this for Charles_ —and Charles murmurs dreamily _love you sir_ and Erik gasps and his hips jerk forward.  
  
Erik evidently likes the reminders of Charles’s power. Likes knowing that Charles could resist, could struggle, could probably even win—Erik will admit this deep down to himself if never aloud—and Erik likes knowing all this because it means that Charles is here by choice, that Charles wants this, needs this, loves this, as much as Erik himself does.  
  
With that security in place, Erik grabs at the metal of the leftmost bar at the bed’s head, barely keeping enough focus to hold it up. Smoothes it, curves it, forms a graceful sinuous line. _Charles? Watch. I want you to watch_.  
  
He does. Erik’s asking, but he would regardless. It’s hypnotic. It’s going to be used on him.  
  
Erik fits the cool iron around his neck softly at first, delicately, like a kiss. Leaves a hand over it, sensing everything through it, with it, in it. The thrum of Charles’s pulse. The heat and sweat and need in fragile skin. Charles moans, wiggles hips, sliding himself along Erik’s cock where it’s buried inside him. Erik grins. Kisses him again. Leaves the hand in place as if the safeguard’s necessary. And begins.  
  
Erik can judge the strength of metal and the stress behind it to within a hairsbreadth, instinctively. Erik is also proceeding with incredible caution, with a constant chant of _careful careful Charles be careful with Charles_ in the back of his head. Erik doesn’t in fact do precisely what he’d done to Emma Frost—nowhere near as tight, and slow increases of pressure rather than vicious force, and Charles could almost beg for the constriction to be harder, he can barely even feel it—  
  
But Erik’s doing it for him, all that care and concentration and love, and Charles is awash in it, overwhelmed by it. That knowledge pulls him further under, helplessly, though he doesn’t struggle, only relaxes into the sensation, body and mind suffused with sweetly unending stimulation.  
  
Tighter now. Harder to inhale; the next time, he finds he can’t. His hips arch, unbidden. Erik thrusts deeper into him in response, claiming his body that way too. He feels opened up and limitless and surrendered.  
  
The world glimmers, losing coherence, losing definition. His pulse is thundering in his ears, and between that and Erik’s thoughts and Erik’s need and his own desire, he can’t think, and he can’t breathe, barely aware of the bed beneath him, everything falling away except the centers of his rigid cock and the relentless use of his body and the lightheaded drowsy glorious feeling in his head, almost like being drunk on sparkling wine and Erik’s lips saying his name…  
  
He could stop it all. He could ask, or simply take control. He doesn’t. Erik will stop if stopping becomes necessary. He knows that’s true.  
  
The world’s fading in and out. His body struggles on its own, without command, thrashing under Erik’s; and even that sensation’s dizzyingly right, complete loss of control, nothing held back. Erik’s cock pounds into him as his hips twist, as his arms tug convulsively at the implacable restraints, and he thinks he might be going to pass out but he feels his body clench and tighten instead, balls drawn up and tight, cock dripping and ready and poised on the edge. Erik’s hand wraps around the base and stops the climax before it hits, and it _hurts_ and his head rolls from one side to the other, his body coming but not, denied the peak but lost in the sensation, as the pleasure and pain ripple out through the fuzzy limits of his body and beyond.  
  
Erik groans and slams in, so deep it must be splitting him apart, hole lewdly stretched around that enormous length, and Erik comes buried inside him, and Charles feels it all, the jets of wet heat pulsing into his body as he clenches and shudders and writhes on the bed, the endless universe reduced to a single point, all the rainbows coiling into one spot and the rest going soft-edged and black—  
  
Erik’s hand closes over his cock, firm and demanding, and Erik orders, “Come,” flicking fingers across his weeping head, and he does, he is, fantastical unending waves of orgasm like silver lightning, cock spurting over and over in Erik’s hand. Erik fucks him through it, still hard inside him, and the stimulation doesn’t let up, and he’s aware as if from a distance that his body’s struggles are ceasing, feeble weak twitches, but he’s still coming somehow, as Erik’s hand works his cock and Erik’s cock slides loosely inside him and, oh, _there_ —  
  
He convulses one more time, final bolt of delicious agony from his cock, his overtaxed body, his empty lungs and mind, and he doesn’t know anything else for a while.  
  
He wakes to find Erik clutching his hand with white-knuckled fingers and clutching a Styrofoam cup of tea with the other and looking wild-eyed and slightly desperate. _Charles—!_  
  
 _Mmm…yes?_ He tries wiggling toes, then fingers, the ones not being held. He feels warm all over, and sore, and exhausted, but a good kind of soreness. The kind of soreness that’s an accomplishment, hard-won exertion.  
  
He opens his mouth to say he’s all right. Winces. It’s not _that_ bad, but not the definition of comfortable, either. _I’m all right._  
  
“No,” Erik says. _No, no, you are not, you passed out in my arms and I couldn’t wake you, I—Charles, Charles, no, how can I, how could I, never again, ever—_  
  
 _You enjoyed yourself. So did I. Is that tea?_  
  
“I brought it from downstairs. I didn’t want to leave you.” There’s a metal spoon wrapped around the disposable cup, a sloppy twist of frantic metal. There’s another one in the cup, which no doubt explains why the tea’s still hot. Erik holds it out like a hopeless apology. _Charles, I—you’re hurt—_  
  
 _No, I’m not._ He takes a sip: exact right temperature, exact right sweetness. He takes another sip. Pauses. _How’d you get the sugar in? Those’re paper packets._  
  
The flicker of image answers the question: Erik using a fork to skewer two paper corners and rip them open along the way. Charles blinks. Tests his voice. Working, if ragged around the edges. “Really?”  
  
“You were hurt.” As if this is an answer. Well, perhaps it is. “How do you feel?”  
  
“Good.” He looks up, squeezes Erik’s hand in his. _Really very good. I mean…tired, and I’m going to swear at you telepathically if there’s any turbulence whatsoever on the plane home, but…good. Better._  
  
 _Better?_ Erik takes the tea, when Charles’s hand wobbles slightly. _Better than earlier tonight, or than the moment you fainted?_  
  
 _Oh, will you not phrase it that way, I sound like a helpless damsel in a fairytale…_ “Better than earlier tonight. This feels…” Brighter. Clearer. More steady. He lets Erik feel all of that, wordlessly; after a moment, senses the nod of acceptance if not quite comprehension.  
  
“You did like it.” Erik looks at the tea. “You…watching you, being with you, when you were—I’ve never felt anything like that. You were projecting. I don’t know if you noticed.” _You weren’t noticing much of anything. But you felt like…_  
  
 _Then you know I needed it. And you—it was good, for you. You were good for me—you were perfect, love_. “I think…I knew I was in your head, and then I stopped noticing…did you mind?”  
  
Erik lets out an amused huff of breath. “Not at all. Some CIA agents might’ve had interesting dreams. I couldn’t tell how much you were shielding. If you were.” _I love it. I love watching you—feeling you—lose control, being who you are, not holding back, letting me be there with you when you come screaming my name in your thoughts. I love you._  
  
 _I love you, sir._ “I had very basic shields up…I always do, they’re set to stay up even if I’m unconscious or asleep…” A swift mental check in surrounding rooms yields a slight twinge of embarrassment. “Probably should’ve reinforced. Not thinking. But they’ve all had very good dreams so far. What time is it?”  
  
“Nearly two.” Oh. Not that long after all. He does the mental math, rapidly. He was probably only out for a matter of minutes.  
  
“You should sleep. We’re getting picked up in six hours.” Rest, Erik’s thinking. Rest, recover, please, let me sit here and guard you all night, I can do that for you.  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Charles says, and holds out a beckoning arm. “You did most of the work. As it were. Come here.” _I told you you were perfect. You are_.  
  
Erik looks as if he’s hurriedly trying to come up with counterarguments, but in the end just slides into bed naked and wraps both arms and a leg around Charles, clinging. The room’s a disaster, stray metal and clothing and drying liquid soap and the scent of sex and sugared tea. It’s wonderful.  
  
 _I’m not,_ Erik says just when Charles thinks he might be asleep.  
  
 _Hmm?_  
  
 _Perfect. You said. I—you couldn’t talk, when you first woke up. I did hurt you. I’m sorry._  
  
“Oh…” He wriggles around enough to meet pale eyes _. I’m all right. And you—you did take care of me. You did exactly what I needed, you pushed me just enough, and you held me and brought me tea, after. No one else ever—I’ve never had that. You listened to me._  
  
 _I will always listen to you!_ Erik pauses as if startled at the thought. Charles can guess why, coming from that hard-won and lethally-honed independence. But Erik says it again, more quietly, aloud: “I may not always agree, but I will listen. I love you, Charles.”  
  
“And I love you.” _And this…this isn’t an everyday sort of thing. I promise not to ask unless there’s nothing else, nothing we’d normally do, that’ll be enough. Does that help?_  
  
 _Yes_ . “Then…you’ll understand if I don’t offer…but if you ask, if you tell me that’s what we need…yes.” Erik reaches out, brushes a curl of Charles’s hair back into place, still with that shy little thrill at the intimacy, at being allowed these smallest of closenesses. “You’re not wrong about me. About how much I liked it. I know you know.” _You are better, though? We did enough, that was enough, for you?_  
  
“Yes,” Charles says, not immediately but after thinking it over, testing himself and his emotions: exhaustion over here, healing bruises from the events of the day over there—the impact lingers, even as the hurt fades, but that’s becoming only a memory, and they’re stronger for having dealt with it together. They’re happy, he and Erik both, here and now. He can feel it.  
  
The shining bit of once-watch metal slips up and loops itself around his right wrist, a cheerful little witch’s familiar nestling down for the night.  
  
 _Yes_ , he says again, directly into Erik’s head, and Erik smiles.


End file.
